How software-defined radio could revolutionize wireless

The Phi hopes to do for radio what Apple I did for computing—spark innovation.

In 1976, two shaggy-haired college dropouts founded a company called Apple to manufacture personal computers. The company's prospects looked so poor that the third co-founder relinquished his 10 percent stake in the company for $800 that same year. It simply wasn't clear why anyone would want the firm's Apple I computer. It was so under-powered that it couldn't perform many of the functions of mainframes and minicomputers that were already on the market. And most consumers had no interest in having a computer in their homes.

Today, of course, Apple is the world's largest company by market capitalization. What was important about the Apple I wasn't the meager capabilities of the original version, but the promise it held for rapid innovation in the coming decades.

Now, a company called Per Vices hopes to do for wireless communication what Apple did for computing. It is selling software-defined radio gear called the Phi that, like the Apple I, is likely to be of little interest to the average consumer (it was even briefly priced at the same point as the Apple I, $666.66, but has since been placed at $750). But the device, and others like it, has the potential to transform the wireless industry. This time, the revolution will depend on hackers enabled to manipulate radio signals in software.

The versatility of software-defined radio

Traditional radio chips are hard-wired to communicate using one specific protocol. For example, a typical cell phone has several different chips to handle a variety of radio communications: one to talk to cell phone towers, another to contact WiFi base stations, a third to receive GPS signals, and a fourth to communicate with Bluetooth devices. In contrast, software-defined radio hardware works with raw electromagnetic signals, relying on software to implement specific applications.

This makes software-defined radio devices tremendously versatile. With the right software, a single software-defined radio chip could perform the functions of all of those special-purpose radio chips in your cell phone and many others besides. It could record FM radio and digital television signals, read RFID chips, track ship locations, or do radio astronomy. In principle it could perform all of these functions simultaneously. Software-defined radio hardware also enables rapid prototyping of new communications protocols.

Software-defined radio will make it possible to use the electromagnetic spectrum in fundamentally new ways. Most radio standards today are designed to use a fixed, narrow frequency band. In contrast, software-defined radio devices can tune into many different frequencies simultaneously, making possible communications schemes that wouldn't be feasible with conventional radio gear.

Most significantly, the widespread adoption of software-defined radio hardware could undermine the FCC's control over the electromagnetic spectrum itself. Right now, the FCC largely focuses on limiting the transmission frequencies of radio hardware. But this regulatory approach is likely to work poorly for software-defined radio devices that aren't confined to any specific frequency.

The effective deregulation of the airwaves could create headaches as careless hobbyists pollute frequency bands that have been reserved for other applications. But it's also likely to usher in an era of unprecedented radio innovation as millions of people have the opportunity to experiment with technologies that, until recently, were the exclusive domain of well-funded industrial labs.

The pioneers

Software-defined radio has had political undertones since its inception. A decade ago, some early software radio enthusiasts became interested in the "broadcast flag" debate then raging in Washington. Hollywood wanted to force consumer electronics companies to detect and comply with metadata in HDTV broadcasts that would signal what consumers were allowed to do with television content.

Eric Blossom, founder of a software project called GNU Radio, hoped that implementing an HDTV receiver in software and releasing it as open source would demonstrate the futility of this approach. Even if the government forced his project to implement the broadcast flag, he argued, anyone could tweak the source to disable the broadcast flag code and then re-compile it.

The effort to build a software receiver for the ATSC television format was ultimately successful. "We would record samples off the air, then process them in our app in GNU radio, and you could watch the MPEG of Law and Order," Matt Ettus, a contributor to the effort, told us.

Ettus said the hardware used to build the ATSC receiver "wasn't something that someone else could go out and buy." Also, it "wasn't well set up for what we were doing." It could only capture a narrow slice of spectrum: 100 kHz at most. That was enough for Law and Order reruns, but Ettus believed better hardware would be needed to unleash the full potential of software-defined radio technology.

"To do more interesting things you need more hardware," Ettus said. He wanted to capture a much wider range of frequencies. And he wanted other advanced features like the ability to handle multiple antennas simultaneously.

The USRP

"I went a long time trying to convince somebody else to build this thing and nobody would," Ettus told us. So in 2003, he began work on what became the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP). In 2004, he quit his job as an engineer working on conventional radio products to focus on the USRP full-time, shipping his first unit on January 1, 2005.

Today, Ettus Research builds a range of devices specifically designed for software-defined radio. A working USRP system comes in three parts: the main USRP box, an RF daughterboard, and a computer. The daughterboard handles the actual reception of radio signals, and passes the analog signal to the main USRP unit. Ettus explained to us what happens from there.

"First it converts the analog signal to digital. Then the digital signal is sent to a field-programmable gate array. The FPGA does the high-speed processing and the user can modify it and put all sorts of interesting things in there. In the most basic configuration, the FPGA reduces the sample rate, does some frequency translation, and then sends that out over the interface" to the CPU.

The interface that connects the USRP to the computer is the main thing that distinguishes the various USRP models from each other. The cheapest model (costing $650) delivers the data to the user's computer over a relatively slow USB link. The priciest model (costing $1700) has a gigabit Ethernet interface. In between, the company offers an "embedded" model that includes a built-in CPU capable of running a full Linux distribution, which allows it to function as a stand-alone device.

Each RF daughterboard is designed to receive a different range of frequencies. "We used to need a lot of different daughterboards to cover an interesting frequency range," he told us. "When we first started, you could only get a couple hundred MHz with decent performance. But as technology advanced, we've gotten newer and newer daughterboards with wider range."

Ettus said one of the most interesting applications for the USRP has been for open source cell phone telephony. Users have configured USRPs to provide GSM cellular service, deploying them "in a number of places, from Burning Man to small islands in the Pacific." The hackability of the USRP makes it more versatile than traditional cellular gear, making it ideal for unusual environments.

Wireless security research is another key application for the USRP. For example, one research group used a USRP to discover security vulnerabilities in the wireless communications protocol of a commercially available pacemaker. "If you want to determine wireless security, you need to be able to send those devices interesting packets," he said. "You need complete control of the packets you send, and you need to examine the received packets at a fundamental level." Conventional wireless hardware can't match the flexibility of software-defined radio hardware for this kind of application.

How do these software radios actually work electrically? Are they reprogrammable tuners/mixers or are they literally just parking an oscillator at some frequency and running a really fast A/D to capture everything moving through the air over a very wide band?

Can they simultaneously read in 1 GHz and 2 GHz transmission for instance?

Thank you for an interesting article on a very, very cool topic that isn't yet on many people's radar, even amongst the technology oriented. As you say, the number of potential applications is staggering, and at the same time the entire field could be extremely disruptive to a lot of established, and very powerful, interests. It'll be very interesting to see exactly how it plays out, but the potential is incredibly important. Bandwidth and infrastructure are key limitations in the modern world and seem to be becoming ever more entrenched and constricting choke points. All First World societies seem to have accumulated a lot of very sticky historical cruft when it comes to usage of the EM spectrum, which in turn results in significant inefficiency. There are certainly risks, but given the practice of what we've been stuck with and how poorly it has been progressing for the last decade I think the potential benefits well outweigh the potential harm.

It'll also be personally exciting purely in terms of history. I was alive but too young to fully appreciate what was going on with the original personal computer revolution in the 80s, so I'm particularly looking forward to being in the thick of it all this time.

Nitpick: It isn't, not by any physical metric you could associate with "size".

I've been waiting for well over a decade for software radios to take off, but had always heard the FCC was blocking any useful applications. Glad to hear some people are trying to sneak them in under the radar regardless.

Hopefully I don't have to wait another decade before the many complex, disparate radios in mobile devices finally get replaced by a single, unified, far more capable software radio.

So basically, you have a tunable oscillator/mixer with 2 moderately broadband A/D and D/A. So I guess you pick 1 (or 2?) channels and then log everything in that approximate band and use software to home in on specific carriers or whatever.

How do these software radios actually work electrically? Are they reprogrammable tuners/mixers or are they literally just parking an oscillator at some frequency and running a really fast A/D to capture everything moving through the air over a very wide band?

Can they simultaneously read in 1 GHz and 2 GHz transmission for instance?

Not so stupid a question actually. I also wondered about that.

Due to the nature of electromagnetic, signals need to be modulated or EM waves will not be emitted.

Plus, the antennas must be at least as long as 1/4 lambda and (IIRC) not multiples of 1/2 lambda. This practically limits the usable wavelengths used, introducing "blind spots" here and there.

I'm not saying that those limitations are insurmountable, but designing/engineering around them would surely introduce additional complexities, and hence, increased cost.

SDRs are everywhere actually. Most radios are SDR based though limited by firmware to coexist with existing rules.

For traditional SDRs, what happens is you have an analog front end consisting of an antenna, ampllifier, and a pair of mixers driven by an oscillator that feeds a local oscillator signal out of phase, giving you an IF signal with an in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) component. Stick those in a ADC and you're done/ Common SDRs use audio ADCs (24bit/192kHz) to give you a 192kHz bandwidth at 24 bit resolution, and software takes the rest.

The new generation of SDRs use a high-speed ADC, limiting the analog parts to the antenna and an amp, and digitizing everything from that. Then you can feed it into a massively powerful computer and see the whole spectrum at once. Or, to make it more managable you feed it into a digital downconverter (a discrete time mixer) which lets you focus in on the bands you want at varying bandwidth. The limit here is your hardware DSP - you can listen in on as many bands as you have processing hardware to run separate downconverters for.

The latter is a direct-sampling SDR and is of the new breed of SDRs coming on the market. Given you can get 250MS/s ADCs, Nyquist gets you 0-125MHz sampling right off the bat.

For transmit, it's a bit easier - either a DAC to an amp (you can get 400MU/s DACs good to 200MHz), or more traditionally, a DAC followed by a upconverter (analog), power amp, antenna.

Of course, receivers don't need licensing, but transmitters do to prevent interference. You can bet that the need to license transmitters will never go away because of interference. Pirate radios yes, but there will be no "free spectrum" for transmission because that leads to chaos.

How do these software radios actually work electrically? Are they reprogrammable tuners/mixers or are they literally just parking an oscillator at some frequency and running a really fast A/D to capture everything moving through the air over a very wide band?

Can they simultaneously read in 1 GHz and 2 GHz transmission for instance?

Very interesting article. I wonder if some form of widely-dispersed radio astronomy could be done with this, akin to the SETI@home project? Given enough of these units spread across a huge geographic area, the right kind of software could create a virtual antenna with a ginormous radius.

SDR is going to lead to positive changes in several industries. It's also going to bring hell.

Projects like OpenBTS, for example, are amazing. Their project is focused on doing good. They know what they're doing, and follow the law. Which is great. Because if they were focused on doing bad, and breaking the law, they could do so just as easily.

As SDR becomes more affordable more people will work with it. Both for positive reasons, and negative. SDR will allow anyone so inclined to mimic existing networks. What happens when someone decides they want broadcast over the entire FM range? Or mimic a cell tower to snoop your communications? Or overpower GPS signals? Indeed, all of those things have already been accomplished. The only thing stopping it from being more common is the cost of hardware.

Conversations on the possible positive impact, while worthwhile, ignore half of the topic. What happens when people decide to intentionally be malicious?

How do these software radios actually work electrically? Are they reprogrammable tuners/mixers or are they literally just parking an oscillator at some frequency and running a really fast A/D to capture everything moving through the air over a very wide band?

Can they simultaneously read in 1 GHz and 2 GHz transmission for instance?

Not so stupid a question actually. I also wondered about that.

Due to the nature of electromagnetic, signals need to be modulated or EM waves will not be emitted.

Well my thinking was that if you have a fast enough A/D and D/A you don't actually need a modulator/demodulator. But apparently we're not quite there yet.

pepoluan wrote:

Plus, the antennas must be at least as long as 1/4 lambda and (IIRC) not multiples of 1/2 lambda. This practically limits the usable wavelengths used, introducing "blind spots" here and there.

Those rules of thumb are for simple dipole antenna. They're probably using something a bit smarter then that. But yes, you have to swap the antenna if you want to go from 100MHz to 4GHz.

Very interesting article. I wonder if some form of widely-dispersed radio astronomy could be done with this, akin to the SETI@home project? Given enough of these units spread across a huge geographic area, the right kind of software could create a virtual antenna with a ginormous radius.

someone is already having a go with the funcube dongle its another lower cost sdr in a usb dongle.

I would be happy with an AM,FM radio PCIe for the pc. As far as transmitting goes,the practicallity of computing might include a PCIe two-way radio on one of the familiar FCC channels. This would be useful for boating ,camping,stuff like this.

The simplest implementation of this is would be something of a 'radio scanner',again a PCIe for the pc. My look at it,is that the frequency ranges would be something held in a software 'tuner' . You supply the antennae.

The implementation of the several used ranges Wi-fi, a/b/g etc.,are implemented directly because of the relationship of the 'regulated'nature of the components. I dont know of the different chips involved,but they are probably each different,and separate. When a 'software'tuner,would simply glaze on each at its spec.,and adjust wattage on the transmittion end automatically. Dont know how well software receivers are 'tuned',being that they are confined by their own specs. But incremental tuning in the Hrz.range would bring about some interesting relationships.

A single chip with variable software tuning,and programming would be interesting. Dont know reason AM,FM Pci e is not been available,or seen available.

It's hard to say for sure, but I think there's a very good chance that will not actually end up being a huge deal, at least once society adjusts. The key factor is that, of the entire range of technology crimes, or even crimes in general, it's hard to think of many where a person or item announces the problem more clearly. "Maliciousness" and "incompetence" appear to be similar here: someone sets up a device that, either by intention or just simple misconfiguration, ends up being a bad EM citizen and pumps out too much power too randomly, thus acting like a jammer and mucking things up for others. However, by definition anything operating with that kind of power is dead easy to find by anyone at all. The exact same physics that cause it to mess with other network equipment also means it's a big fat "Here I Am" sign.

So it'll be easy to see who or what is being bad, and thus I think tools and social norms can be developed to handle it. It seems very similar to noise pollution really, if someone is partying too loudly and bothers the neighbors then the first step is just calling them up or walking over and asking them to turn it down, which often is enough right there. Everyone here could go out and buy a big set of speakers, turn them up to 11 and be a jerk, but that isn't a widespread problem because most people aren't jerks and even for those that are most will bow to social pressure. For what remains, just call the cops. "It's freaking one in the morning and so-and-so's kid is having a rock concert in their back yard" becomes "so-and-so's kid is operating a jammer and messing with everyone's Internet".

No doubt there will be plenty of growing pains though, and people being idiots. Wasn't too long ago where we had a story covering people pointing lasers at aircraft for example.

They did but the cost was to high and a lot higher complexity.The price for this is better US$9750/850 but still not cheap (okay its very cheap compared to a lot of existing sdr boards)

Funcube dongle is $155 but more limited and rx only.

This board still uses hdl for the fpga and driver in c or c++.

If you want to "hack" it you still need to know hdl (verilog or vhdl) and have to use the manufacturers tools.Its impossible to do full open source on fpgas with the current generation (need the manufactuers tools to do synthesis , mapping and bitstream generation)

I think it has great potential but its still expensive if they can get it down until $200 or less it would go like hotcakes.

Would be nice to see Altera sponsor something like this to promote their fpgas as their development boards are usually much more expensive than xilinx.

Problem is if you had a clue and wanted to its possible to jam essential frequencies. Keeping a bit of complexity helps reduce this.

This could help reduce the cost of phone jammers for movie theaters etc

This is something that has existed for many years, just that it hasn't really gotten to the hobbyist market yet. I'm a little surprised at a couple of their statements. The "spaces" in between are guard bands, and they're there to minimize interference (barring harmonics). Also, I'm unsure why they would think that they would avoid the FCC when the FCC is concerned about ERP from antennas (and would probably be concerned as well at the possible maximum power at a specific frequency).

The real reason that software definable radio is as limited as it is is due to the limitations with PAs and antennas, and with the narrower and narrower tolerances for more advanced data rates (QPSK, OFDM, etc).

How do these software radios actually work electrically? Are they reprogrammable tuners/mixers or are they literally just parking an oscillator at some frequency and running a really fast A/D to capture everything moving through the air over a very wide band?

As the name would imply the components of the transmitter or receiver would be implemented in software. Not a very useful statement, I know. In general, SDR makes the whole system more flexible. Instead of "hardcoding" the functionality into an IC it's done in C/C++ or VHDL. Some or all of the following blocks can be implemented: filtering, modulation, demodulation, detection, channel equalization, and amplification. The A/D is usually configurable too.

redleader wrote:

Can they simultaneously read in 1 GHz and 2 GHz transmission for instance?

In terms of a dipole, that's mostly correct but a more complex wide-band antenna could be used.

I like this, obviously the FCC will impose some sensible restrictions. Things like limiting the maximum power output of the module, then making it illegal to circumvent the restrictions.

Otherwise, I like the idea of having a more central system, much like I can get one computer to be a media center, file server and gaming machine, having a single device be a wi-fi AP, garage door opener and cell repeater.

If it does go the way early computers did, then having handheld version opens up significant opportunities for innovation, since what you can do isn't limited by the chips the manufacturer put in.

It's hard to say for sure, but I think there's a very good chance that will not actually end up being a huge deal, at least once society adjusts. The key factor is that, of the entire range of technology crimes, or even crimes in general, it's hard to think of many where a person or item announces the problem more clearly. "Maliciousness" and "incompetence" appear to be similar here: someone sets up a device that, either by intention or just simple misconfiguration, ends up being a bad EM citizen and pumps out too much power too randomly, thus acting like a jammer and mucking things up for others. However, by definition anything operating with that kind of power is dead easy to find by anyone at all. The exact same physics that cause it to mess with other network equipment also means it's a big fat "Here I Am" sign.

The problem is that a malicious actor need not operate for very long to cause damage and can do so from a mobile platform. And aside from actual criminal types, there are also just a lot of immature idiots too (think of all the laser pointer pointed at landing plane incidents). Just Imagine all the 4chan-type geeks capable of causing real damage just for the lulz.

I think what many proponents envision as the future/solution is that most communications will be some form of spread modulation that involves something like key exchange to define the modeling functions/scheme. In this circumstance impersonation is difficult-to-impossible (due to the keys or whatever) and jamming will also be very hard as it is generally quite difficult to jam most spread schemes. I think the hope is that everything will just sort-of dynamically negotiate for somewhere spectrum-wise to operate and everything will just be able to step all over everything else (many spread systems work like that - see for example CDMA) and the system will still work fine. Whether an RF world like this will ever come to pass or is just a futurists' pipe dream I don' know.

How do these software radios actually work electrically? Are they reprogrammable tuners/mixers or are they literally just parking an oscillator at some frequency and running a really fast A/D to capture everything moving through the air over a very wide band?

Can they simultaneously read in 1 GHz and 2 GHz transmission for instance?

Not so stupid a question actually. I also wondered about that.

Due to the nature of electromagnetic, signals need to be modulated or EM waves will not be emitted.

Plus, the antennas must be at least as long as 1/4 lambda and (IIRC) not multiples of 1/2 lambda. This practically limits the usable wavelengths used, introducing "blind spots" here and there.

I'm not saying that those limitations are insurmountable, but designing/engineering around them would surely introduce additional complexities, and hence, increased cost.

How do these software radios actually work electrically? Are they reprogrammable tuners/mixers or are they literally just parking an oscillator at some frequency and running a really fast A/D to capture everything moving through the air over a very wide band?

As the name would imply the components of the transmitter or receiver would be implemented in software. Not a very useful statement, I know. In general, SDR makes the whole system more flexible. Instead of "hardcoding" the functionality into an IC it's done in C/C++ or VHDL. Some or all of the following blocks can be implemented: filtering, modulation, demodulation, detection, channel equalization, and amplification. The A/D is usually configurable too.

redleader wrote:

Can they simultaneously read in 1 GHz and 2 GHz transmission for instance?

In terms of a dipole, that's mostly correct but a more complex wide-band antenna could be used.

ugh thanks i guess, but I already looked up and posted the actual answer above, so no need for you to guess how they work.

How do these software radios actually work electrically? Are they reprogrammable tuners/mixers or are they literally just parking an oscillator at some frequency and running a really fast A/D to capture everything moving through the air over a very wide band?

Can they simultaneously read in 1 GHz and 2 GHz transmission for instance?

Not so stupid a question actually. I also wondered about that.

Due to the nature of electromagnetic, signals need to be modulated or EM waves will not be emitted.

Well my thinking was that if you have a fast enough A/D and D/A you don't actually need a modulator/demodulator. But apparently we're not quite there yet.

pepoluan wrote:

Plus, the antennas must be at least as long as 1/4 lambda and (IIRC) not multiples of 1/2 lambda. This practically limits the usable wavelengths used, introducing "blind spots" here and there.

Those rules of thumb are for simple dipole antenna. They're probably using something a bit smarter then that. But yes, you have to swap the antenna if you want to go from 100MHz to 4GHz.

True, but using 'smart antennas' certainly will push up the price. After all, smart electronically adaptive antennas are not really mass-produced items.

Quick gripe:The intro seemed to me to imply that Apple came to their vast fortunes solely due to their computers. The majority of their profits come from iTunes and related (mobile devices) sales and not from their computer business.

That may not have been what you were going for though so it might just be me.

On another note...This was an interesting read and I am going to have to look into this some more. Thanks.

Wollesen told us that rather than transmitting data in a narrow range of frequencies at high power, a software-defined radio device can transmit data across an extremely wide range of frequencies at low power—so low that it's imperceptible to the conventional radio devices that are operating on the same frequencies

A bug.

The thing about citizen maliciousness is interesting because what empowers the citizen also empowers the establishment, and earlier since they have the financial resources to do so. Maybe you'll see active research into adaptive systems that keep the rest of us in line.

I think the legal issues surrounding this at least in europe will heavily restrict what an indivudal device could be capable of. Under the EC R&TTE regulations of 2000.

1. licenses are required to broadcast on most frequencies irespective of power.

2. most those licenses are unatainable as they have been exclusivly auctioned to third party monolpolies

3. devices that do broadcast on licensed frequecies (mobile phones) are sub licesned through the network provider's licsense - so the device would need to be facilitated through a licsense holder- which will restrict it to frequencies that the provider holds a license for, by definition, the providers don,t have licsenes for each others frequencies.

4. a device cannot operate accross more than one individually licensed frequency band - ie across gsm900 and gsm1800.

Great future thinking but i think there will be a hell of a lot of red tape.

(i was prosecuted a couple of yeara ago by OFCOM for brodcasting on unlicsensed frequencies and for using a device that worked accross multiple frequencies)

This has to be one of the most interesting pieces I've read in Ars recently. Very promising tech. That said, I hope they can work out the interference/spectrum allocation issues. And implement this as a low-power SoC - imagine phones that can be upgraded to the next cell spec (5G?) through software! Although I can hardly imagine phone manufacturers thinking very highly of this - after all, that would undermine the incentive to move from a 4G to a 5G phone

Apple is not the worlds largest company. It's not even the worlds largest tech company, 43rd to Samsung's 24th by 2011 revenue. Try and contain you ridiculously obvious Apple bias just a tinsy bit in future. Oh and research and fact checking are also staples of good journalism... so I hear.

Great articles (as almost always) BUT please change "Today, of course, Apple is the world's largest company." They are not the largest by any means except perhaps within IT... If someone don't believe me please go check in "Samsung" they are kinda big....It doesn't look good even though I understand the reason, but please rephrase to something like "one of" or "largest within PC/IT/whateever"..

Very interesting technology but there's always one question would this be possible to use as a "super-wide-band frequency jammer"? ie. could you destroy stuff with this technology Also a sort of question how would this change the "spectrum control" that most countries use to make sure no one crams the "international frequencies" would there still be some freq that would be "no-touchie" or would those restrictions be removed if this got in to "everything"...

And how/when can I get this in to my phone so I can get super reception and bandwidth wherever I am

Apple is not the worlds largest company. It's not even the worlds largest tech company, 43rd to Samsung's 24th by 2011 revenue. Try and contain you ridiculously obvious Apple bias just a tinsy bit in future. Oh and research and fact checking are also staples of good journalism... so I hear.

Cool article, reminds me of the earlier projects I used to watch my father create (advanced class Ham, EET, software engineer etc..). When I was younger I watched him create our own little ham radio kits, 2000w linear amp (we had to give all our neighbors ferride coils so it never bleed through the tv's...) capture and decode weather packet data and later move on to experimenting with RFID. Eventually he created a RFID and satelite tracking system (mid 1990's) for the steel plant he works for in chicago which is still highly used today over the company's entire plant. Nice to see that people have started to notice the potential and versatility for software radio applications.

Sorry, it's a fascinating subject ruined by hugely out of place fanboyism.

You must not have read the same article as me. While I don't particularly like Apple, and while I think mentioning it as the largest company in the world is highly debatable and depends on you choice of metric, I can't understand how this thread became about that instead of the exciting tech reported on. The comparison with Apple is an insignificant part of the article. Someone's got a really sensitive Apple nerve... in fact, several people do, apparently.

In my job I work with a bunch of Harris LOS Software radios; the software defined part was actually the main reason the military ended up with these. Being able to install a firmware update to enable an entirely new waveform is totally awesome but has a downside.

Now we pay MILLIONS for what amounts to a firmware update. Maybe I'm a bit more old school but installing a few MB of software on existing hardware at tens of thousands of dollars a pop just doesn't seem like its worth the money.

Timothy B. Lee / Timothy covers tech policy for Ars, with a particular focus on patent and copyright law, privacy, free speech, and open government. His writing has appeared in Slate, Reason, Wired, and the New York Times.